Five Times Jack Wished He Really Was A Superhero
by Eliza4892
Summary: The hero always gets the girl But Jack isn't the hero of this picture.


He remembers the tears, cool against his warm cheeks, flushed with anger and embarrassment.

"You don't have what it takes."

He remembers his father's hand on his arm, contact, rare as it was, making him nervous. It's not like this could get any worse he thought (wrong, as usual, if you were to believe his father), trying to allay whatever fears were cropping up and making his insides twist.

One long finger raises – better than a hand, because then he surely would've gotten hit – and lifts his chin, forcing him to look at his father. Blue eyes meet brown, as he says, "Real men don't cry."

Jack can't call him a liar, or wrong for that matter because he hasn't ever seen another man cry. Not friends, not relatives, certainly not his father whose face is always stone cold, always edging on slightly annoyed, but never, ever crying.

The men in the movies don't cry either, that's left solely up to the women. Nearly thirty years later he'll meet a woman who'll tell him that is not only yet another way of misrepresenting females, but also the reason she hates chick flicks and Hallmark movie of the weeks. But he's noticed that these men, action stars and debonair gentlemen do not cry. Real men (although movies are not reality, but this isn't necessarily something a ten year old grasps clearly) do not cry. Hero's don't cry.

So Jack makes a wish. He wishes he were a superhero. Not one of those cartoon ones – he knows enough to be confident that Superman was never and will never be real despite what Hollywood and George Reeves (and later Christopher) have to say about it. He just wants to be someone who's strong and who isn't ever afraid. Who doesn't show his emotions, doesn't cry.

Maybe then he'll be able to stand up to his father, he thinks.

---

He wanted to be the hero or at least that's what he had thought. He was so young when he made that wish, and had he been able to see the future he probably wouldn't have made it all.

But he couldn't see the future and he couldn't stop planes from falling out of the sky (a superhero would've done both). Yet they all looked at him like he could if he tried hard enough. He could be their saving grace, something this group of misfits and liars were in desperate need of. The thought that maybe he needed to be saved too never crossed their minds.

Jack didn't know why they latched on to him, and him only, as their leader. The hero of the movie. He certainly didn't ask for it and he definitely wasn't the only one capable. Locke wanted to be in charge, Sayid was probably the most able – unattached and governed by logic and reason rather than his emotions. These people, these survivors, chose him though.

So he gives his speech, takes a stand in front of those forty odd survivors and tells them that they can get through this. That there is a way.

"If we don't live together, we're going to die alone."

It's a warning, it's advice, it's the best he can do.

Kate looks at him, gives him a nod, lets him know he's doing the right thing. In the coming weeks, months those words leave her lips multiple times and he guesses it's a sign of faith. In this – their survival. In him.

She looks at him like he really, truly, is a hero. It hurts him later, in the long run, because she puts him on a pedestal and that kills any real chance of them being anything more than close friends but he's not thinking about his — or their – future. He's having a hard time telling himself they will have a future much less the others. But that faith, that belief, makes him want to be everything she thinks he is. It makes him want to be the hero, the champion, the savior. Enough to push aside the fear, to remember to count, to throw himself into the role.

He just hopes he can live up to the expectation.

---

Leader is obviously not the role he's cut out for because the only thing Jack manages to lead them into is a trap.

The room they hold him in is cold and damp, and strangely sterile. The silence puts him on edge.

It's not long before this new player is factored into the equation. Juliet is blonde and pretty in a less obvious sort of way that would make her intriguing if she weren't the enemy. She reminds him of Sarah, a fact he realizes might not be a coincidental just a little too late.

She's got files that tell her anything and everything she wants to know about Dr. Jack Shephard. He wonders if somewhere it says 'doesn't have what it takes' or any of the number of other calculated insults his father threw at him.

Either way it's no wonder she makes quick work of getting under his skin. It can't be that hard with a how-to list sitting right in front of her. A guide to breaking him.

And break he finally does. Head held in shaking hands as he sinks into the corner. Because Jack cries, he doesn't hold it in like he was taught, like maybe he should.

Her blue eyes fill with concern, even a little pity.

"You're not a hero Jack, stop trying to play one."

Of course he's not. He's not strong enough or brave enough. Able enough. Just like his father always said.

Without Kate looking at him like that (and to be honest she hasn't in awhile, going back long before now) he can't seem to tell himself otherwise. Without their trust, without their faith.

He can't be who he wants to be. This isn't the first time, he knows it isn't going to be the last.

---

The hero gets the girl. Always, without fail. He saves the day, the world even, and the girl goes running into his arms at the end, and the screen fades to black as the camera pans down on a kiss too practiced and perfect to be real.

Jack can't save the world. He doesn't know if there's really a world to save.

There's no doomsday button to push (that's Locke's job) or special mission to perform. The only thing he can do is save the life of a man who he hates.

Jack also isn't getting the girl. No, the girl lays curled up in another man's arms. He knows this because he sees it, on those grainy distorted screens. They're clear enough for him, at least in their meaning. He wonders if the Others wanted him to find it.

Some would say this is a sign. Stop trying to save everyone, you're not the hero of this picture. Jack won't stop trying until he gets it right. He's still got a few tricks up his sleeve.

One 'mistake' later and Kate and Sawyer are gone, running through the jungle on their way back home (or the closest to home they're going to get) and at least that means he saved someone. It's only him in this mess now. That's something like redemption.

"You love her, don't you?"

Tom asks him after he tells the other man to turn off the walkie, after he's fixed Ben. Jack bites down on his lip hard, tries to ignore the way his eyes burn.

Yes, he loves her. But she doesn't love him. At least not anymore. Maybe she never did.

He would've liked to be her hero, he thinks.

---

The suit and tie are suffocating after three years spent under the sun on a remote island. The air is too crisp, too cold. Los Angeles is not a cold place, but April here feels like January in New England.

He watches them lower an empty casket into the ground. There was no body; he still doesn't know what happened to it.

The headstone reads: 'Loving husband and father'. It's a line, one last attempt at looking like a normal, happy family. It was his mother's words, not his. She hadn't even bothered to consult him.

He should go to his mother, who is crying like she hasn't already known of her husband's death for three years, like she really truly loved him (and maybe she did, because he is very obviously not a good judge of character or motivations). He should be more responsive to the sympathetic condolences and all the pats on the back, but he merely nods his head.

Jack should be the son who's broken up on the inside but holding it together for his family's sake. But Jack is getting too old for that game and those lies. He doesn't know why he cries other than he's always cried at funerals. Usually it's because he feels like he failed somebody. Really this is no different because he failed his father by not getting there soon enough, by not being what he wanted in a son.

Jack's never failed at failing.

The hero would pull himself together; the hero would put on a brave face. But Jack is no hero, not matter how much he wishes he was, and he finally accepts that now as something that is unchangeable.

There's no more fight left in this weathered, broken man. So perhaps he cries not just for the loss of his father but also the loss of hope and the loss of himself as well.

After all the survivors of Flight 815 all came back more lost than when they left and he can't help but think he could've done something to prevent it.


End file.
